Didn’t get into the school you chose? Here’s why

After getting several e-mails recently from Seattle parents who were upset their child was assigned to a school they didn’t want, I asked the district about school choice applications vs. actual school assignments.

* Beacon Hill, which will become an International School this fall, saw its popularity jump, with more than twice as many parents requesting it as a first choice as the previous year.

* Garfield High School topped perennially popular Roosevelt in the number of first-choice applications, and has a waitlist of 216 students.

*Competition seemed especially fierce in the North End elementary schools. Only 69 of the 151 parents who applied to Bryant got in, for example, and the school has 82 kids on the waitlist. And it was even harder to get into TOPS, either as a kindergartener (only 52 of 156 were admitted) or a sixth-grader (only 9 of 99!).

As a measure of school popularity, it’s imperfect – some parents wind up with their second or third choice, and are perfectly happy with that. And other parents have been known to hedge their bets, listing a school they think they’re more likely to get into rather than the one they really want their child to attend. And the info in the spreadsheets is preliminary — there’s no guarantee the numbers won’t shift by next fall.

But this does give a general idea of which schools are most sought-after right now:

* The most popular elementary schools (judging by the number of first-choice applications received this year): Bryant (151), John Stanford International (146), View Ridge (140), Lafayette (116), Laurelhurst (113), Coe (102), John Hay (102).